


Carcinogens

by confiscatedretina



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-03-17 08:58:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3523301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/confiscatedretina/pseuds/confiscatedretina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Handmaid watches the death of a legislacerator until she changes her mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Carcinogens

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AliveArsenic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliveArsenic/gifts).



> Special thanks to a great beta reader who will be properly named after reveals! :)

She's still fighting when they slip the noose around her neck. You knew she would be. Her skin is cracked and oozing, one leg limp and misaligned. Curses rasp from her mouth flecked in teal blood and accented with two broken fangs she spits in the pirate's direction. Tiny shards of red glint around her eyes, tinted lens fragments nestled in bruised and puffy skin, highlighting a glare as dangerous and burning as sunlight. Her string of invective is cut off only when the rope becomes too tight and still she snaps her teeth at the fingers darting away from her face.

You watch from the shadows between time, waiting for the end you've felt looming in her future for all the sweeps of her life. In a few seconds, Mindfang, unsmiling and surprised regret written in her posture, will be merciful for the first and only time in her life and let the burning rope snap her could-have-been kismesis' neck. She'll fight and grin and tell herself it doesn't hurt and you will hear her whisper this hanged woman's name when you come to take her away.

Her lusus name is Latula Pyrope and you've always felt as if you know her. It's not an unfamiliar feeling; there have been a few trolls throughout Alternia's history that plucked the strings of your ancient memory. These your master has often bid you to watch more carefully than the rest. Each and every one you have or will carry into oblivion once you've shaped the course of their lives sufficiently. All save one, and she will do you the honors someday. You look forward to that. Eternity is tedious and none deserves its burden more than the only person who has almost as much blood on her talons as you do. 

Ah, but you are letting your thoughts run away with you. White eyes blink and you draw your focus back to the present, to the seconds ticking down for Latula, now Neophyte Redglare and never to be anything more. She's been your ward, of a sort, for all the sweeps of her life. It is only courteous to finish this thing you were bid to start.

The barkbeasts were going to slaughter this woman when she was just a teal wiggler and you felt, at the time, that it could only have been a mercy. Her auditory sponges were malformed, a sure death sentence on this violent planet you'd cultivated for so long. Bored, you called forth a few simple ghosts to chase away the animals and stood watch over the helpless thing while she squinted at the brightening dawn. A piercing shriek ripped the sky and a pale dragon descended, the sun's encroaching light holding no fear for a species without eyes. Her talons nearly crushed the girl, who hissed and sank new fangs into death-white scales. The dragon's laugh brushed your mind and, for an instant, you felt a ghost of the beast's surety in the wiggler it carried skyward.

Latula kept you busier than you'd expected. Not one to look kindly on any physical weaknesses, you learned quickly that her inability to hear was a strength in young Pyrope. She wielded it like an unsuspected weapon, making what her prey thought a disadvantage of hers into the thing that brought them down. The dragon taught her things only a lusus could know and very few young trolls would bother to heed. You stayed your hand from ushering her into death, taking a few more lives in repayment each time, not bothering to spare her any deeply painful lessons; the scars would earn her notoriety and praise in adulthood. It was the only way you knew to help her and, despite the millions you had ended in your ceaseless existence, something about this one tealblood stuck in your memory just enough to quirk your lips in an almost smile every now and then.

As a legislacerator, even a neophyte, she was ruthless, tenacious. Bloodthirsty in her way. You couldn't help but feel the faintest hint of pride: the unassuming viciousness was, of course, your doing. Your master, may he burn in the brightest hells, has been pleased with your work in her. He should be; you always do your job. She is the perfect stepping block and inspiration for the descendant her genes will bring forth, one more pawn in the game no one knows they are playing until it is far too late.

And here, now, her life is coming to an end like a thousand, million, number beyond count before it.

Her eyes are bulging in their sockets, cheeks flushing an unnaturally dark turquoise. Hands lift her high and she cracks a skull with one sharp red boot in the same instant air is sucked into hungry lungs. You watch, unblinking as always, when they let her go. Neophyte Redglare hangs suspended in time to you, one second and an eternity from life's edge. 

No.

Fuck this.

Fuck him, too.

Smoke wreathes your fingers in the memory of a lit disposable carcinogen tube, a habit you indulged in a time far outside your vast existence. Reality cringes around you, bending and cracking as you twist it. In the blink of a mortal eye Latula is at your feet. For a few moments she is suffocating again, turning dark under the skin for wont of air until you think to conjure oxygen into your presence. It tastes of old smoke and she coughs, lying prone on her back, tears running down her cheeks.

“Wha...what...?” her voice is a croak, hand shaking as she gestures the word. Her eyes travel up your body and lock on your face. “Oh. Well fuck.”

The sign she makes for that word has always been a favorite of yours and a clipped note of laughter falls from your red lips. She rolls to her feet heedless of any injury; there is no pain here if you do not will it, and nothing for her to stand against anyway. Eyes, teal and gold and black, look into your own, white as the sun's center, emptier than the space between stars. The faint whiff of her fear is already fading. Your smile is all teeth and fierceness, the only kind you remember.

“Not dead,” you say.

That takes her by surprise and Latula looks over her shoulder, squinting at the hazy crowd of her would-be murderers, separated from you both by a veil only a few living souls have ever crossed. A body swings in their midst but most attention is diverted to a fight between two monsters. Many are running and you will visit several more before the pirate is done with lying to herself.

Latula gestures at the body. “Who is that?”

You shrug. “Does not matter. Will be remembered as you.”

Silence wraps itself around the two of you. Alternia fades into a mist of carcinogenic smoke. An unnecessary exhalation escapes your lips, stirring the air and making ghostly patterns that fade too quickly to be understood.

“Why?” she asks into the stillness.

Another shrug. “I like you,” her laugh at this is a snort through the nasal passages. “In my way.”

“So what now?”

A very good question. There is little your vile master does not know about what you do; you'll take the rebellions when they present themselves. The damnable puppet will not know about this, about her. Latula Pyrope is yours, one thing in this disgusting existence you will do with as you please. It is deeply frustrating, but you can't keep her here. A growl lodges in your oral chute.

Of a sudden, she reaches for you. Her hands feel warm despite her caste, blood pulsing beneath skin exposed by her torn gloves. You can't remember the last time anyone has touched you so gently. The willing contact is a surprise and you have nothing to say as she draws you close. Lips still wet with blood brush yours in another gesture you have forgotten. Far away, in some part of you long abandoned, echoes of a voice like hers whisper an earnest threat you knew that husk of a person could never deliver.

Laughter wells up in you and there's not enough time nor credibility to explain it. Here, kissing you, is the real Latula Pyrope, the one that fading other could only play at being. You wrap your arms around her shoulders and kiss back as if you always knew how, smiling.

When your eyes open she is gone. Her voice will echo in the words of blind prophets and her life will reach its pinnacle in a savagely clever, determined girl a thousand sweeps yet to be. But where Latula truly is now you can't say for certain, and that's for the best. He can't find her with no trail to follow. You know she is alive and this time it will be long and good, far away from your master and his lord. She made a gift to a goddess and such things are rewarded. In your most secret moments you will cradle this memory to you like a candle, a warmth in the void between life and death. 

The smoke fades and you grow cold once more. Ghosts brush past your fingers, fading into the ether as your razored talons cut them free of mortality. You pause by the hanged body, not bothering to even look at its soul before cutting it free. The likeness, right down to the atoms, really is uncanny. Enough to make you believe in magic. Almost. 

You touch a finger to your lips and step away through eternity. There is much yet to do before you may rest.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Metastasize](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7588045) by [nanrea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nanrea/pseuds/nanrea)




End file.
